Nicholas Malik Izon McDonald (b. 2001, Conway, Arkansas), is a mixed-media sculptor and clay artist. He earned his Bachelors of Arts in Political Science and Art from Lyon College in Batesville, Arkansas. Malik was a Penland Core Fellow from 2023 to 2025 and is currently an artist in residence at The Clay Studio. Malik examines the condition of Black being and its methods of remembering, maintaining, and perpetuating itself. He focuses on the improvisational quality of Blackness – the usage of the margins, the dark, the coded symbol. Malik’s artwork is a means of uncovering this expansive potential of Blackness through the assemblage of these symbols. In addition to his studio practice, Malik is also a teaching artist throughout the Philadelphia area.